
Essays on Reference, Language, and Mind
Keith Donnellan(Author)
Oxford University Press Inc
1st Edition
Published on 26. July 2012
Book
Hardback
224 pages
978-0-19-985799-9 (ISBN)
Description
Keith Donnellan, Emeritus of UCLA, is one of the major figures in 20th century philosophy of language, a key part of the highly influential generation of scholars that included Hilary Putnam, Saul Kripke, and David Kaplan. Like many of these philosophers, his primary contributions were published in article form rather than books. This volume presents a highly focussed collection of articles by Donnellan.
In the late sixties and early seventies, the philosophy of language and mind went through a paradigm shift, with the then-dominant Fregean theory losing ground to the "direct reference" theory sometimes referred to as the direct reference revolution. Donnellan played a key role in this shift, focusing on the relation of semantic reference, a touchstone in the philosophy of language and the relation of "thinking about" - a touchstone in the philosophy of mind. The debates around the direct reference theory ended up forming the agenda of the philosophy of language and related fields for decades to come, and Donnellan's contributions were always considered essential. His ideas spawned a scholarly debate that continues to the present day. This volume collects his key contributions datng from the late 1960's through the early 1980's, along with a substantive introduction by the editor Joseph Almog, which disseminates the work to a new audience and for posterity.
In the late sixties and early seventies, the philosophy of language and mind went through a paradigm shift, with the then-dominant Fregean theory losing ground to the "direct reference" theory sometimes referred to as the direct reference revolution. Donnellan played a key role in this shift, focusing on the relation of semantic reference, a touchstone in the philosophy of language and the relation of "thinking about" - a touchstone in the philosophy of mind. The debates around the direct reference theory ended up forming the agenda of the philosophy of language and related fields for decades to come, and Donnellan's contributions were always considered essential. His ideas spawned a scholarly debate that continues to the present day. This volume collects his key contributions datng from the late 1960's through the early 1980's, along with a substantive introduction by the editor Joseph Almog, which disseminates the work to a new audience and for posterity.
Reviews / Votes
The book is highly recommended to lower and upper undergraduate students that have some interest in the contemporary philosophy of language. Since he advanced some of the necessary topics to understand the contemporary philosophy of language, it is essential to graduate students and scholars that would like to have in a unique volume the main papers of Donnellan about his proposal of the direct reference theory. * Juan J. Colomina, metapsychology online reviews *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Target group
College/higher education
Philosophers of language and mind; students of modern metaphysics and epistemology, as well as of linguistics and cognitive psychology
Dimensions
Height: 222 mm
Width: 145 mm
Thickness: 16 mm
Weight
429 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-19-985799-9 (9780199857999)
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Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

Keith Donnellan | Joseph Almog | Paolo Leonardi
Essays on Reference, Language, and Mind
E-Book
06/2012
1st Edition
OUP eBook
€44.99
Available for download
Persons
Keith Donnellan is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at UCLA
Joseph Almog is Professor of Philosophy at UCLA and is the editor of Themes from Kaplan, Cogito: Descartes and Thinking the World, and What Am I: Descartes and the Mind Body Problem
Paolo Leonardi is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Bolonga
Joseph Almog is Professor of Philosophy at UCLA and is the editor of Themes from Kaplan, Cogito: Descartes and Thinking the World, and What Am I: Descartes and the Mind Body Problem
Paolo Leonardi is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Bolonga
Author
Emeritus Professor of PhilosophyEmeritus Professor of Philosophy, UCLA
Editor
Professor of PhilosophyProfessor of Philosophy, UCLA
, University of Bolonga
Content
Editors' Introduction ; 1. Reference and Definite Descriptions (The Philosophical Review 1966, 75: 281-304). ; 2. Putting Humpty Dumpty Together Again (The Philosophical Review 1968, 77: 213-15). ; 3. Proper names and Identifying Descriptions (Synthese 1970, 21: 335-58). ; 4. Speaking of Nothing (The Philosophical Review 1974, 83: 3-31). ; 5. Speaker Reference, Descriptions and Anaphora (in Syntax and Semantics, Vol 9. Pragmatics. P. Cole, ed., New York Academic Press, 1978, pp. 47-68). ; 6. The Contingent 'A Priori' and Rigid Designators (Midwest Studies in Philosophy 1977, 2: 12-27). ; 7. Kripke and Putnam on Natural Kind Terms (in Knowledge and Mind: Philosophical Essays, Ginet, Carl (ed), Oxford UP 1983, pp. 84-104).